My opinion on the value of old items is that they were created for a task, they performed the task and then survived to the present. For example I am thrilled when I can hold and read a rare book that was read by somebody 400 years ago. I'm seeing the same information that they saw, I'm reading the same words. Some of the books aren't event that old, I have read first edition science fiction books from the 1930's. Seeing an old computer gives me the same thrill, the Smithsonian has examples of computers on display that I can remember using 20-30 years ago. Maybe it's nostalgia for my youth. I think the real reason is that there was a great promise that computers offered to solve problems never before solved. Now we are numbed by the rapid progress and "noise level". There are games, media, and information that comes at us in an avalanche and we filter out the value of most of it. The Apollo era computers and hardware now seem so simple almost antique, yet at the time they did the job and were examples of the level of sophistication that could be achieved. Mike mmcfadden(a)cmh.edu